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FEATURING DINA GILIO-WHITAKER - In August 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather for her mistreatment after her 1973 protest speech at the Oscars. Littlefeather shot to fame when Academy Award winner Marlon Brando asked her to decline the award on his behalf. She read a speech about Hollywood’s discrimination against Indigenous people and was booed off stage and blacklisted ever since.

But just days after receiving the Academy’s long-overdue apology, a shocking revelation about Littlefeather raised the fraught question of Indigenous American identity–she was outed as an ethnic fraudster and was revealed to not be who she said she was. The case sparked a new book by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes). Gilio-Whitaker is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. 

An award-winning journalist as well, she contributes to numerous online outlets including Indian Country Today and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of multiple books, including As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about her new book, Who Gets to Be Indian? Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I remember being horribly shocked as well when the revelations about Sacheen Littlefeather came out. I was at that time writing a book about narratives and had actually written a whole section in my book about her putting forward a narrative about racial identity, ethnic identity, and native Americanness, and, had to quickly go back and kind of rewrite some aspects of it. 

And I also remember you on Facebook—we’re Facebook friends—talking about it, you had a little bit of insight before the rest of the world knew what had really happened with Sacheen Littlefeather. Take us through that. You knew before most people did, that she actually wasn't who she said she was. And that was because you yourself had been fascinated by her story. So, tell us about that. 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Right. Well, this is really the, the point of origin for this book. I mean, it's something I've been thinking about all my life because of my own com complex identity issues. But, the book started as a result of my relationship with Sacheen Littlefeather, which began in 2012 when I was writing for Indian Country today. 

And, I had gotten to know her. I was asked to write a story about her. It was had to do with a Dennis Miller comment about her, a racial slur. And so, it led to my writing this article about that and meeting her. 

After I wrote that article, she asked me if I would be willing to ghostwrite her memoir. She wanted to write this memoir, and this is about a couple years later. And I said, sure, you know, let's explore that. So, it led to this whole experience that I had with her, where we began the process of writing this book together. 

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FEATURING ANYA ROSE - The November 2025 elections showed Americans are in a mood to tax the rich to fund the things we all need. That sentiment wasn’t just on display in New York City where voters picked a mayor who promises free childcare paid for by taxing the rich, but the state of Colorado where a pair of propositions in a similar vein passed. 

Propositions LL and MM passed by wide margins and levy taxes on the wealthiest Coloradans to ensure school kids are fed at no cost to families and that cafeteria workers would be better paid. The ballot measures come in the wake of a massive political battle that saw interruptions to the federal food stamp program.

Anya Rose is the Director of Public Policy at Hunger Free Colorado, a statewide nonprofit that connects people to food resources and drives policy and systems change to end hunger. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about how the ballot measures passed and what they mean for Coloradans.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's talk about what these two propositions are. Why were they in two separate propositions to begin with? There's LL and then MM. And since, since you are really in the trenches with this, give us a brief overview of what each of these ballot measures asked of voters. 

Anya Rose: Yeah. So, these ballot measures one, there are two of them because of some very particular Colorado laws. But essentially, they are about continuing the Healthy School Meals for All program in Colorado, which was created back in 2022 when voters first agreed to create and fund this program, and has since been wildly popular and, and proven to need some more revenue. 

And so, proposition LL is about asking to keep money that has already been raised for this program. That's something we have to do in Colorado because of provisions in our state constitution called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that are pretty restrictive about how revenue can be raised and used in our state and also determine election provisions. 

And then proposition MM, was about raising additional revenue to make sure that the program has long term sustainability and can be fully implemented since some pieces that were really important to community have been on hold. 

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FEATURING DIEGO FRANCO - Thousands of Starbucks baristas began an indefinite strike on November 13, the so-called “Red Cup day,” a major holiday-season marketing gimmick by the corporate coffee chain. The workers, who are part of the relatively new Starbucks Workers United union, are saying “No Contract, No Coffee,” and are asking members of the public to not cross the picket lines at hundreds of Starbucks cafes around the country until their demands are met.

Diego Franco is a six-year Starbucks barista, based in Chicago. He is a member of Starbucks Workers United, where he serves as an elected strike captain and bargaining delegate. He recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today titled “I'm a Starbucks barista. I'm striking because I want 'the best job in retail.”

Franco spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about why Starbucks workers are striking.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I've been following the Starbucks organizing effort for the last few years, relatively speaking. It is a new union when it first burst onto the scene and cafes started organizing one cafe at a time. It drew a lot of attention. I think primarily because Starbucks is such an iconic American brand, is this indefinite strike, meaning it's not just a one-day strike, strike until demands are met, an unfair labor practice strike, is this the first major nationwide strike of this nature that the union has taken on? 

Diego Franco: This is not the first nationwide strike, however, this will be the largest strike in the company's history. 

Kolhatkar: And so why are people striking? And, and I also should emphasize that this is not the case that all Starbucks cafes are unionized, right? There's a fraction of Starbucks cafes that have unionized, albeit very fast. So, it's just those cafes that have union staff that are on strike and, why are they on strike? 

Franco: We are on strike wanting to fight the unfair labor practices and wanting to finish out our contract. Starbucks has been stonewalling us for the past year and don't believe we are deserving of more in our economic package. 

And, notoriously, they have invested a lot of money in union busting campaigns, either across the whole country or on a store-by-store basis. And we're simply doing everything we can to fight that. 

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FEATURING ANGELA MOONEY D'ARCY - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week Angela Mooney Darcy, Executive Director and Founder of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples joins us. Angela is from the Acjachemen Nation, the Native Nation whose traditional territories include the area also known as Orange County, California. She has worked with Native Nations, Indigenous peoples, grassroots and nonprofit organizations, artists, educators, and institutions on environmental and cultural justice issues for over twenty-five years.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Angela Mooney D’Arcy: Thank you so much for having me. I started listening to your show when I was in law school years ago, so was very…

Sonali Kolhatkar: Oh my goodness!

D’Arcy: …very, very excited to get your message. 

Kolhatkar: Well, we've both been at it for a long time, and I'm glad our paths have intersected. Tell me about the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples. How do you summarize the work that your organization does? What is your main organizational goal? 

D’Arcy: Well, our mission is to build the capacity of native nations and Indigenous peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures. And our goal is to achieve paradigm shifts, to protect Indigenous people so that our peoples and cultures can exist for all time. 

And for us, that very much is about protecting all of our human and non-human relatives and the earth herself, because Indigenous people's life ways and relationships with the earth and with all of our relatives around the world is what keeps the world in balance. 

And as you indicate in your introduction, right now, we are a world very much out of balance. So, from our perspective, supporting Indigenous peoples in this way, and that paradigm shift actually protects the world for everyone.

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FEATURING GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA - Donald Trump’s second term agenda is centered on the criminalization, scapegoating, incarceration, and disappearance of nonwhite immigrants. And although many Americans seem to have forgotten it, his first term was also marked by the same. 

A new book called Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life, follows the stories of 16 migrant families from Latin America who were victims of harsh government enforcement through 2018 and 2019, and how their stories distill the deeply-politicized issue of immigration through a much-needed human lens.

The book's author, Gabrielle Oliveira, is Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar recently about it.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, as I mentioned, a lot of folks forgot the family separation scandal, the horrific kind of human tragedy that unfolded in the years 2016 to 2020. And far too many Americans decided that they could cast their vote for Trump, including people from mixed-status immigrant families. And now we're seeing, I think in escalation even it seems of what happened in the first term. 

So, tell me about these families you profiled and why you wrote this book. These were families that were victimized, criminalized and, really traumatized in 2018 and 2019. Why them? 

Gabrielle Oliveira: Right. So, I was doing work, you know, at the time I was doing work in schools here in Massachusetts that had bilingual programs, which meant that, you know, children were learning in Portuguese and in Spanish. And that has been, you know, some of the work that I've been doing for my own trajectory, my own career. 

And I started hearing during these interviews with families, families describing what had happened to them at the border, either being detained and separated, or detained together. And those stories just seem that, you know, the families were very much still thinking about those stories. The children were bringing those stories to the schools, and the teachers didn't really know what to do with, you know, the stories that were being brought to the school. 

So, for me, it was really important to try to capture in real time what was happening and to hear from the families that had just gone through those separations and detentions, either together right, or being sent to different places in the United States. 

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FEATURING OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE - The latest United Nations climate conference, COP30, is taking place in Belem, Brazil where nations are still attempting, after decades, to comprehensively tackle climate change and its impacts head on. 

While much mainstream American discourse on climate justice is centered on preserving humanity and human lives, a new brief by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) brings to the forefront a critically important tool for climate justice: the rights of nature, an all-encompassing legal approach to preserving all life.

Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). She sits on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about WECAN's new report.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: The place that I have heard the rights of nature really come up. and, you know, and I think folks who are engaged in the climate justice movement know of Ecuador's case in 2008, I believe it was, that Ecuador essentially changed its Constitution to encompass, to uphold and to preserve the rights of nature. 

Using that, using Ecuador as an example, how do you explain what it means when you say the rights of nature?

Osprey Orielle Lake: Well, it's really an important country where rights of nature, as you said, put in 2008 rights of nature to the Constitution. And it's been a growing movement for many years. in the seventies, there was a professor Christopher Stone who put out a document called “If Trees Had Standing,” which in essence basically said, could we have a form of jurisprudence, a way of law that recognized that the natural world could have its own rights? 

And it's a really important activity, philosophy, and action for the climate justice movement because, right now, nature does not have standing in a court of law. And so, in the new systems that we have since colonialism, people own property. And so, you have to have the property owner represent a river or a mountain or a forest. 

And what rights of nature laws do is they really turn this inside out and upside down, and say, no, we actually are living in a time in which the rivers and the mountains and all of the animals need their own rights to be represented and have their own voice in court of law. 

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FEATURING YASHICA DUTT - Zohran Mamdani, the unlikely 34-year old Uganda-born, South Asian, Muslim, immigrant is New York City’s new mayor.

Journalist Yashica Dutt, who has closely followed his campaign described last Tuesday’s election this way: “against all odds, Mamdani — through his gifted political acumen, a brilliant team of 30-something managers, and his exceptional hold over his own narrative and messaging — carved his own space in the political mainstream while the establishment was intent on not giving him an inch.”

How did he do it? Were there missed opportunities? What are lessons we can learn from his campaign and candidacy?

Yashica Dutt is a Dalit journalist and author of the award-winning book on caste, Coming Out as Dalit. She has been covering New York's Mayoral election since April and was the first journalist to extensively cover the South Asian mobilization for the Zohran Mamdani campaign. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what the campaign got right and where it could have done better.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, was it surprising for you? I mean, polls showed that he looked like he was going to win. It would've been shocking if he hadn't, it seems. And still it felt, at least for those of us watching from far off, quite unreal. What was that like on election night? What was the atmosphere in the city? 

Yashica Dutt: The atmosphere in the city, not just on election night, but in the weeks before the election was absolutely electric. I have been reporting, like you mentioned, since April, and there was such a stark difference in what we saw during the primary. 

Even before the primary election in New York, there was a sense that Mandani could win. As somebody who had been attending all these events and seeing the response from people change towards him in such a dramatic way. I remember I attended this event in Ozone Park, which is a Bangladeshi majority neighborhood here in Queens in New York City, and he literally got mobbed by Desi folks, a lot of people who wanted to get photos clicked with him. 

People saw on their Instagram stories that he was there, and they just rushed to see him, to get a glimpse of him. And that was before the primary. So, you can imagine after months of excitement and the polls that really showed him way ahead of Andrew Cuomo, and also the events that he had done. 

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FEATURING NOURBESE FLINT - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week our guest is Nourbese Flint, President of All* Above All, and All* In Action Fund, leading their work to build political power and achieve reproductive justice for all.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: What does All above All mean? I get that it's a reproductive justice organization, but that name, I think, an explanation of it can help people understand where you're coming from. 

Nourbese Flint: Yeah. So, it's actually a part of our origin story. All above All was created right after the Affordable Care Act passing I think it was in 2008, 2009?

Kolhatkar: 2010, I think. 

Flint: Yeah. Whew, I’m like dating myself. But, when it got passed, the kind of compromise was abortion access. So, we still didn't have any federal coverage of abortion. And we had to segment in state coverage for abortion access. And so, some of us got together and kind of had a conversation like we can no longer have and leverage abortion access, particularly abortion access that really impacts folks who are living at the margins, as a tool anymore. 

And so, All Above All really leaned into when people say “All,” it's usually with an asterisk, and it's not really all, it's well ‘all accept women of color or all accept LGBT folks or all accept young people.’ And so, we wanted to lean into the All. And when we say All it means all, so All* Above All with the asterisk saying that we are actually putting first the folks that usually are the asterisk at the bottom. 

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FEATURING JEAN SU - A massive push for data centers around the nation threatens to undermine progress in combating climate change. Our voracious appetite for cloud storage, search engines, and especially artificial intelligence has a serious real-world impact–one that threatens our very existence. 

A new report by the Center for Biological Diversity outlines this threat and how it can be addressed. Jean Su is the energy justice director for the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Washington, DC and she shared the report's recommendations with Sonali Kolhatkar.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, of course we've dealt with or lived with, I should say, issues around what powers search engines and cloud storage, and that, in and of itself has been a concern. But just in the last few years, the incredible reliance on artificial intelligence seems to have hypercharged, I think, this impact, particularly as we're seeing Wall Street, you know, new startups, hedge fund investors you know, all of these ventures, including government support being thrown behind this technology that uses massive amounts of energy. How serious is the fossil fuel impact of AI data centers? 

Jean Su: So, the fossil fuel impact of data centers is extremely grave and serious. Just to give you a comparison, web services, search engines, all of those things you just mentioned are one 10th of the electricity that's needed to actually fuel AI, artificial intelligence. So that's a huge difference. 

What we did was that, we calculated the projected carbon emissions of this surge in an AI boom, and we found the carbon emissions from a primarily fracked gas-powered expansion are incredibly large, and they're so large that they could undermine our national climate target for 2035 by 60% in, in the sense that other sectors would have to actually cut an extra 60% for us to even meet our climate goal of trying to limit greenhouse gases to a livable planet. 

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FEATURING TOM MOORE - Ask most ordinary Americans what is the biggest source of corruption in elections and many would say “money in politics,” or, if they were really well-informed, “dark money,” or “the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision.” For a long time we’ve accepted the assumption that the only way to undo that 2010 Supreme Court ruling was for Congress to pass legislation doing so or for the court itself to change its mind–both, extremely unlikely scenarios. 

Now, voters in Montana are gearing up to ban corporate dark money in their state in 2026 by using a simple and innovative redefinition of what a corporation is. If they succeed, it could open the door for all states to do the same.

Watch Sonali Kolhatkar's post-election analysis on Disinfo Detox with Nolan Higdon.

Click here to watch the video

Tom Moore is a senior fellow for democracy policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC. His white paper on the topic has become the basis for Montana's effort. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his idea.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's first talk about what it was that the ruling itself said. The Supreme Court made this ruling on its own in 2010. It came, seemingly at that time, out of nowhere, caught a lot of folks off guard and has completely changed or worsened, or exacerbated our political system in terms of the influence of money. 

What was it that the Supreme Court actually said was now possible starting in 2010? 

Tom Moore: Sure. What it said was that if you spend independently in elections without coordinating with the candidate, without talking to them, without plotting any strategy or anything like that, if you do that, then that money can't be corrupting. 

So, an unlimited amount of it wouldn't be corrupting either. You know, candidate contributions are okay, you can only give, you know, $3,000, to this campaign or so forth if you're giving directly to a candidate. But if you do it independently, an independent expenditure cannot be corrupting. And so, it can't be regulated. And the court had held in 1976 that really the only reason that we can regulate campaign spending is if it creates corruption or the appearance of corruption. 

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FEATURING GUILLAUME LONG - For months now, the Trump administration has been building up military hardware in and around the Caribbean and making inflammatory statements implying an impending war with Venezuela. US airstrikes on ships in the region have killed dozens of people under the dubious claim of illegal narcotics shipments. But, in a recent CBS interview, Trump claimed it was unlikely he would launch a war on Venezuela. 

Guillaume Long is a senior research fellow at Center for Economic and Policy Research. He has held several cabinet positions in the government of Ecuador, including Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Culture, and Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent. Most recently, he served as Ecuador’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about why the US is bombing ships in the Caribbean and whether Trump will launch a war on Venezuela.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I feel as though, looking at what Trump is doing in Venezuela, we really need to go back to the very beginning of his term this January, where he signed an executive order declaring drug traffickers to be effectively foreign terrorist: “Designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, and specially-designated global terrorists.” That was the name of his executive order. Is this what he is drawing from, as far as you can tell, in terms of creating his own authority to, to drop bombs and to make threats against Venezuela? 

Guillaume Long: Yeah, I think there's… we have to differentiate a few things. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, naming cartels ‘terrorist organizations’ and, and sort of doubling down on the war on drugs and really sort of heightening and raising the tone of the whole war on drugs, and making that parallel between ‘war on drugs’ and ‘war on terror,’ which is not the first time it's been done. 

The word ‘narcoterrorism’ goes back now, a couple of decades. It was done under the Bush administration as well. But, doing all this, has been one of the aspects of the Trump administration in the Western Hemisphere, and it's in the US policy towards Latin America. And it's part and parcel of a return to Latin America under a security guise, right? 

We are really seeing the United States ‘securitizing,’ I don't really like that verb, but, you know, making security the big deal of the US' approach towards Latin America. It is all about security. Which essentially means US policy towards Latin America right now is all about ‘big stick,’ right? It's about security. It's about, now we're, we're gonna be talking about it. It's about gunboat diplomacy. It's about wielding a big stick and there's not much carrot. It's all about, you know, ‘do this or else.’ 

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FEATURING ELIEL CRUZ - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, my guest is Eliel Cruz. He is an award-winning organizer, speaker, and writer and co-founder of Gender Liberation Movement, an organization working towards bodily autonomy and self-determination for all. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Eliel Cruz: Thank you for having me. I love the ‘bigots and billionaires’ line. They are few, we are many. I’m going to use that…

Sonali Kolhatkar: And that's the point I think for us to cast a focus on social justice organizations that I think a lot of people around the country, you know, think, ‘well, what can I do?’ And it turns out there's a lot of things people can do. There's a lot of organizations out there, but not everyone's aware that they're out there, or have heard of them. So, this is our way of profiling groups like yours. 

Let's talk about Gender Liberation Movement. How do you summarize the work that your organization does? I mean, the title is pretty revealing, but it is broad. What are the main issues that you work on? 

Cruz: Well, the title is broad, purposefully so. So, we are building a lens that's expansive, purposefully, where we can touch on a variety of different issues that gender is a through line for all these issues, whether it be economic justice, climate justice, Palestinian liberation, immigrant justice, reproductive care, gender affirming care, et cetera. 

We see our work as a glue between all these various movements. But our work in particular, we do three areas of work. We do direct action and cultural work, media work, and policy work, all responding to these escalating attacks on gender across the spectrum. 

Our praxis is trans-centered. we don't consider ourselves a trans advocacy organization. My co-founder, Raquel Willis, is a Black trans activist and writer and media strategist. I'm not trans myself but I have been in LGBTQ spaces doing work for a very long time as a queer person. 

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FEATURING HAMZA WALKER - A powerful new art exhibit features pieces that are old. So old that many Americans during the 2020 racial justice uprising felt they had no place being revered in public spaces. More than 140 statues and monuments to the Confederacy, and by extension its legacy of white supremacy, slavery, and racism, were toppled between 2015 and 2020. Hundreds more remain standing. 

Now, a Los Angeles museum is displaying several of these toppled monuments, some still sporting the graffiti of rage, and one, chopped up and reassembled in a grotesque manner by acclaimed artist Kara Walker.

Hamza Walker is the director of The Brick and co-curator of the MONUMENTS exhibition, now on view at The Brick and at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the exhibit and what led to it.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's talk first about this whole controversy around these Confederate era… no, confederate monuments. I wanna clarify, they weren't created or built in during the actual Confederacy. They were built, I understand many of them, of course, they're varied and there's hundreds all over the country, but many of them came up after the Confederacy as a way to keep alive the legacy. And it took many decades then for there to be this national conversation around why we still have these monuments around the country. Is that relatively accurate? 

Hamza Walker: Yes, yes. Yes. They went up I mean, part of the narrative is how did they have a journey, right? In the wake of the Civil War, how did these statues make the journey from the cemetery to public spaces? And how did the men that they celebrate and honor go from being traitors to the union to becoming heroes and paragons of virtue? So that's the kind of story of, or trajectory of these confederate monuments in many cases. 

But the lion's share of them were built in the late 19th and the first quarter of the 20th century. So between, you know, you could say 1890, you know, 1880, 1980 to 1925, 1930. 

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FEATURING FRANK TAMBORELLO - Citing the federal government shutdown as an excuse, President Donald Trump is allowing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to expire. This means about 40 million low income Americans nationwide will lose access to food stamps in November. 

Donald Trump’s Department of Agriculture is falsely claiming in a banner at the top of its website, “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry.” 

Meanwhile, as states, counties, municipalities, and food pantries scramble to feed millions, advocates and activists declared Tuesday October 28 a SNAP Day of Action. 

Frank Tamborello is co-founder and executive director of Hunger Action Los Angeles, whose mission to end hunger and promote healthy eating in Los Angeles County. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what's at stake as food stamps dry up.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: First, let's talk about where there is money. We have 40-42 , million Americans relying on food stamps, which on average works out to less than $200 worth of vouchers that they can redeem for food at grocery stores, sometimes farmer's markets, et cetera. And that is going to get cut off in November. The government is claiming there's no money, but there are emergency funds that are available and that have traditionally, during shutdowns, been mobilized to ensure that there is no cut in funding. What is happening this time around? Why are people gonna lose food stamps in November unless Trump takes action? 

Frank Tamborello: So, as you mentioned there's a contingency fund. It's about $5 billion and a month of SNAP benefits for the country is about $9 billion. So, they could at least do a partial allotment for people. 

And besides that, we all know that especially this president is very proud of his ability to take executive actions. And so, there are probably numerous other avenues that could be taken to avoid people going hungry. But basically, a political game of chicken is being played and Trump is betting that people will blame the Democrats for the shutdown.

And you pointed out the banner on the USDA website, which is a clear violation of the Hatch Act. In other words, you're not supposed to use your political office for grandstanding in a partisan way, and that's exactly what's happening. So, it's not giving the full story of what the government shutdown is about. 

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FEATURING DEAN BAKER - On October 28, a month into the federal government shutdown, the United States Senate voted for the 13th time on a funding bill to reopen the government. Senate Republicans needed five more Democrats Senators to join them in order to pass the resolution but the opposition party has held firm–for now. 

Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump want to strip government subsidies from health insurance premiums for plans obtained through the Affordable Care Act but Democrats are refusing. Meanwhile, in response to the deadlock, Americans enrolled under the ACA are already being notified of huge increases to their premiums, a real-time demonstration of the GOP’s desires. 

Trump and the Republican Party currently have no plan to control rising healthcare costs and early on, pivoted to making wild and false claims about Democrats holding out to preserve insurance coverage for undocumented people.

Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. He recently wrote a clear explanation of the shutdown and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about it.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I think it's so important for people to really be clear because they're getting such false information from the government. For example, if you go to the USDA's own website right now, at the very top is a banner that says “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as SNAP. Bottom line: The well has run dry.” I mean, that's just the USDA. 

And of course, Republicans in the Senate are also making wild claims. They claim that health insurance premiums would rise no matter what. 

So, let's talk about what's really going on. What is it that Republicans want to do? What are they holding out for? 

Dean Baker: Well, there are two things going on here. One is that they do, as you had mentioned earlier, they wanted to basically gut the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. They aren't gonna eliminate them altogether 'cause there were subsidies that were put into the act when was first passed back in 2010. 

The immediate issue are the expanded subsidies that were put in place under President Biden during the COVID period, which made it much more affordable, both for people at the low ends. You have a lot of people that, in states where they didn't expand Medicaid, where this allowed them to get coverage for free. And these are low-income people, say 130% of the poverty level. So even paying a hundred, $200 a month for insurance was a really big deal. That's what they faced before that. Those were part of the expanded subsidies, which the Republicans wanna eliminate. 

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FEATURING AHMAD ABUZNAID - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, our guest is Ahmad Abuznaid, the Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and USCPR Action. Prior to joining USCPR, Ahmad co-founded the Florida-based Dream Defenders and went on to lead the National Network for Arab American Communities as the Executive Director from 2017 to 2019. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about USCPR's work.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: How do you summarize the work that USCPR does, including the main issue you work on, which of course is Palestine, but how do you summarize the, the, the entirety, if you will, of this issue and what you see as your organizational goals? 

Ahmad Abuznaid: Yeah, that's a great question. We are the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and so the title gives you a bit of a sense of what we're about. But in reality, it's deeper than that because since we are in the middle of the United States of America, the biggest backer, the biggest arms provider, and the biggest diplomatic defender of the state of Israel, we actually as tax paying citizens here, have a burden. We have a duty, we have a responsibility, and we should be ending all military aid to the state of Israel. That is our stated mission. That is our stated goal. 

And we believe that that accomplishes two things. That ending of military support to the state of Israel would empower the Palestinian people to be in a greater position to determine our self-determination, our liberation, without the United States of America supporting and supplementing and financing Israel's occupation. 

But on the other hand, that also would put US taxpayers in a greater position to demand where we would like our taxpayer dollars going towards. You know, I think we often hear time and time again how social security benefits need to be cut because they're too expensive. Healthcare costs cannot be supplemented by the government because it's too expensive. We have infrastructure falling apart in this country. We have teacher salaries that we can't afford and schools that are closing down. 

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FEATURING AISHA COFFEY - Federal workers are in the midst of a second crisis. After being devastated by mass firings and furloughs from President Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the on-going government shutdown is now jeopardizing pay for those remaining on the payroll. 

The federal government employs millions of workers whose jobs entail upholding government services, public safety, enforcing regulations, distributing benefits and more. Now, a new series of shorts called I Do Solemnly Swear, features the voices of government workers pushing back. The series airs on Free Speech TV on Tuesday October 28 at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern.

Aisha Coffey is a strategic communications consultant with over 15 years of experience at federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is the spokesperson and Communications Director for Federal Workers Against DOGE, a grassroots organization representing more than 1,500 federal employees across over 50 agencies who are advocating for labor protections, effective government and the preservation of democracy. 

Aisha Coffey spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the dire situation facing federal workers and how they are speaking out and rising up.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Before we get to the series of shorts that is gonna air on Free Speech TV called, “I Do Solemnly Swear,” let's talk about what workers have been going through, broadly speaking. As I said, millions of workers are employed, and of those, give us a sense of how many have either been fired or furloughed? What are the numbers we're talking about here of people who work for us, who are impacted negatively by the current administration? 

Aisha Coffey: I gotta say that's a question we all would like to know the answer to. As you know, the administration came in with a bit of chaos, so we don't exactly have the real solid numbers. We've been unable to get those numbers from any agency even up until now. 

We've had to piece together the numbers from what we hear from federal workers from different agencies and, and outside entities that may be trying to keep a tally. By count, right now, the estimate that is that we've lost close to 50,000.

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FEATURING LEONARDO MARTINEZ - On October 16, just before 8 am, Leonardo Martinez, a volunteer with the immigrant rights group VC Defensa, was observing ICE agents in Oxnard, California. It’s something he’d been doing for a while. But this time, ICE agents, who were driving in an unmarked SUV, decided to take a violent turn and rammed Martinez’s pickup truck. 

Not only was Martinez injured during the incident and had to receive medical treatment, but taken into ICE custody and detained for a while at Metropolitan Detention Center in LA. Martinez is a US citizen. Now, he’s speaking out about his experience. 

Leonardo Martinez, volunteer and lead organizer with VC Defensa, an immigrant liberation organization and rapid response network based in Ventura County, California, spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his experience and how his group engages in community defense.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program, Leo.

Leonardo Martinez: Thank you very much. It's an honor to be on the show. I've been a fan for a very long time. I Appreciate it. 

Kolhatkar: Thank you for joining us. Tell me what it is you do before we get into what happened on October 16th. In fact, I'm speaking to you right now as you're sitting in what looks like a, a minivan and you're imagining in Oxnard, what is it that you have been doing in your capacity as a volunteer with VC Defensa? 

Martinez: Well, one of the, one of the things out of the many things that we do is what everybody saw. The video is where we go patrolling it to keep our community safe. 

But the truth is that the bulk of our time goes into what I'm doing right now, accompanying people to meetings, appointments that they have with immigration. We do a ton of family support. When somebody's detained, we put money on their books. We get our lawyers to support them and focus on getting them out on bail. We have taken kids to the border to reconnect with their family members. We have had to do a whole host of things, because rarely when somebody gets detained, is that the only problem that the family has to face? Right? 

So, we have to deal with everything from car mechanical issues all the way over to taking kids to school and transporting people. There's older folks that we gotta take care of sometimes. So, we really try to do as much as we can to support the families, while at the same time, another huge portion of our responsibilities as an organization is doing a ton of… they're called “know your rights” meetings, I guess, in jest. But the reality of it is that we go so much deeper than that. 

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FEATURING NO KINGS ATTENDEES, LOS ANGELES - Organizers of the October 18 No Kings rally expected five million people to attend about 2,600 gatherings across the United States in a show of opposition to President Donald Trump’s regime.

In Southern California, where this program is based, numerous local gatherings took place, and today as part of our on-going series, Rising Up in the Streets, I bring you a report from Hollywood and downtown LA where a cross section of attendees grappled with the state of the government and their vision for the future of the nation.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, reporting from the No Kings Rally in downtown Los Angeles. It's actually the tail end of the rally. And I was here among thousands of people at Gloria Molina Park right in front of Los Angeles City Hall, where a very, very diverse crowd of people was gathered, reflecting Los Angeles's demographics, but also an interesting political spectrum ranging from people who are aligned with a Democratic party all the way to folks who want a democratic socialist revolution, folks that were wearing kuffiyahs to express their solidarity with Palestine, as well as people who were expressing solidarity with protestors in Portland through large animal costumes, inflatable animal costumes. 

And generally, there was an air of joy and also rage. And so here are some of the interviews that I gathered. I also went to Hollywood on the corner of Vermont and Hollywood where there was a gathering on a street corner, a very, very large gathering on a street corner with signs encouraging people to honk their horns. And there are, are some of the conversations that I had with people on the October 18th, No Kings Day. 

Kim: My name is Kim. I am from Hollywood. And the reason I'm here today is so many reasons. Where to start? The fact that, you know, we have a person in the White House who is a narcissist, a sexual predator, and he just wants power for himself. 

He doesn't care about the American people. He talks about this being a “Hate the America” rally when he's the one that actually hates this country and he's trying to tear us all apart, tear down our infrastructure, our democracy, and everything that makes this country great. 

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FEATURING CHAUMTOLI HUQ - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, we’re joined by Chaumtoli Huq, founder and editor of Law@theMargins, a law and media nonprofit that amplifies the perspectives of those marginalized by our legal and broader political and economic systems. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, we talk to people who are involved in organizations that are very big and very small, and although I understand that your organization has been around for nearly a decade, it is a nimble and small organization. How do you summarize the work that it does, to a national audience, and the main issues that you work on, your organizational goals, if you will?

Chaumtoli Huq: Yes, absolutely. So, you're absolutely right. We've been a nonprofit organization at the intersection of law and media and policy for about a decade. We are primarily a volunteer-driven organization, membership-based, working closely with organizations and individuals who are at the front lines of justice. 

And so, through our work over the years, we've conducted trainings, webinars. We've done, sort of, original reporting on social justice issues such as immigration, housing, national security around global issues, such as around Palestinian liberation, Rohingya genocide. And we have done this through a number of formats, through curated conversations, through original reporting.

And primarily, the role is to provide a counter narrative to some of the established sort of ideas around laws and the legal system and politics. And the goal is, by shifting the narratives, we're able to actually have an impact on the policies. And that's primarily has been our work for the last decade.